SS/PS question

[zanooda2]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "Carol" <justcarol67 at ...> wrote:

> > Potioncat:

> > English is such a precise language. ;-)


> Carol:

> Just goes to show what a slippery thing the English language is.


zanooda:

Well, I was surprised at first that native English-speakers
("wand-carriers" :-)) had different opinions about one rather simple
sentence :-). But then I thought about it, and now I understand that I
was surprised mostly because in my own language misunderstandings like
this are much less likely. 

Our language structure mostly doesn't allow for different
interpretations. We have cases, and we have genders (three of them
:-)), so nouns and adjectives have different endings depending on what
gender, case and number they are. 

Different readings are still possible, I guess (I just can't think of
any example), but in the sentence in question the word "hand" would
just have one ending if it modified "thing", and a different one if it
modified "caught". No problem :-)! OTOH, our words order in a sentence
is not as fixed as it is in English, which can sometimes lead to a
confusion, I suppose.

All this kind of makes translators' job more difficult, doesn't it?
Maybe I'm too hard on them ... :-). Thank you again for your replies!